Fairy Tale
by muaaimoi
Summary: Magical realism, Penny searches for her story.


She is the progeny of blind parents. They cannot see her for what she is, the monster they have born. They think she is just another normal kid and treat her as such. Their sight has been worn away by the world's disappointments so they close their eyes by choice because they don't want to see. She takes the shape they expect from her. So when her father looks at her and calls her son, she is, and her mother looks at her and sees another helpless child, she is. Neither of them see her claws. She is her Father's son until her mother decides she is her daughter instead. She is handed a red cloak and sent off with a care package to her ailing grandmother.

Penny transversed throughout the woods unconcerned with the howling of wolves. One tries to tempt her off her path by promising to show her flowers she has never seen before. Penny goes, recognising the predator before her, puzzled that it does not seem to recognize her in return. Then she realized the cloak covered her claws. In the field full of red flowers the wolf promises will bring her sick grandmother joy. The wolf gives her it's back. Penny sinks her fangs into it's throat and devours it before it has the chance to eat her first. She chokes on the fur and decides that wolves are not for her. The cloak stays in the field full of flowers of the exact same shade. Lost forever.

Penny never liked it anyway. The red was too defining, the first thing anyone would notice when she wore it. The world was blind enough to the truth of her existence without it.

Now that she was his daughter, her father no longer bothered with her. Penny was left chasing her mother's affections. Her mother taught her how to sew. Her sister taught her to wear makeup and smiles like armor. When she is sixteen she pricks her finger on an old loom she stumbles upon, but she has been wearing armor for years. She is never without it. It surrounds the whole of her body, like scales. The needle tries, but it cannot bite into her hardened flesh.

Penny is close to twenty when she feels the walls of her home closing in. She has grown too large for the small space Nebraska grants her, tired of being bound by expectations. So she goes, follows a yellow brick road full of promise with a man who swears their future will be magic. The spells spill from his lips with every step. When the road ends at California and Kurt presents her with ruby slippers. Penny does her best to fit them, tries to squeeze into the shape of them, but try as she might, she can't quite fit her claws. It hurts, the edges cut at one of the few places her armor can't reach, stain the shoes redder than before, red enough for him, she thinks. Kurt's eyes stray to someone who can wear them and her heart breaks. All the magic she had known fades away.

She tells herself love isn't for monsters anyway. Despite the ache in her heart. The slowly forming scar that is proof her love was torn away. That it had existed once before and could again. Hope probably wasn't meant for monsters either.

Penny is searching. She can't go back to pretending she isn't what she is, and so the only choice left is to find a role to play that lets her play herself. For a time, she thinks she can play predator to Leonard's prey. But he is a mouse pretending to be a man, and unlike herself, he has yet to accept that some roles aren't worth the sacrifice of who you are. She doesn't like the version of a man he tries to be anyway.

She breaks them up.

She finds she misses the tin man the most. Sheldon, who bears a shell as hard as her own, who used his brilliance like a sword. She wonders at the strength of his armor, the way it had always withstood the scrape of her claws. When she corners him in the laundry room and asks, she is unsurprised to learn that the armor is self made. Sheldon uses his intelligence to compensate. He builds the pieces he felt he was born missing.

What shocks her to her core is that he presents her with wings. Bulky, mechanical things, but she can use them to fly. He gives her the sky and Penny finds the truth. The reason why the stories of Dragons have always withstood the test of time. She can make the world quiver at her might. She loves the power she holds over the world that once scorned her. The knowledge that she can tear the world asunder and only her mercy holds it in place. Penny feels like she can finally be happy with being a monster.

She never feels more like herself than when she's playing Dragon to Sheldon's knight.

**x**

**All the thanks to MissTiraMissSu for making this legible. Any mistakes are all my fault and I take full responsibility.**

**Every once in a while I write something that makes me blink and realize what a weird place my head is. I basically just wanted dragon Penny, which was originally going to be the end of Release the Dragon(which I have yet to finish), but I decided I wanted her to be a dragon on her own. Please let me know what you think :)**


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